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Amazon appears to be tracking every tap on Kindle
- klysm 7y agoI’d be somewhat surprised if they weren’t. Deep, invasive telemetry is widely practiced
- jedieaston 7y agoPresumptively, they can’t do this with an unregistered Kindle, right? Which wouldn’t be as convenient, but you could buy books from Amazon, and then use Calibre to strip DRM and send to kindle over USB.
- zozbot234 7y agoWe should not be required to strip invasive DRM as a privacy-protecting measure, that's ridiculous. Buy a physical, paper book, that's not going to track you.
- zaat 7y agoE-books do have some benefits. To list a few: they require much less weight and space, they are searchable, they offer dictionary and they can be delivered to you in seconds regardless of your location.
- zozbot234 7y agoAnd I do take advantage of these benefits when I can do that easily, such as with a plain, DRM-free format. I'm just not going to use invasive DRM-based platforms that come with these blatant privacy concerns.
- ohithereyou 7y agoThis is precisely how I use my Kindle Keyboard that I bought secondhand for cash at a local bookstore. Brought it home, did a factory reset, and only push DRM free books or books after stripping DRM.
- acidictadpole 7y agoYou could, but that's technically against the law (circumventing DRM). You shouldn't have to break the law to protect your privacy. I'm wondering if this person on twitter had any kind of usage-data opt-out that was on their kindle and they just hadn't opted out. I haven't looked at my kindle's settings in a long while, but I'll take a look when I get home tonight.
- jgmrequel 7y agoWhile I'm surprised at the granularity, this seems like it would be needed at some point to generate read times and such. Kindle tells you how much time is left in a book and this is either a WAG or something based on data.
- sigwinch28 7y agoYes, this information would be needed at some point to generate read times. But why does it need to be calculated on Amazon's servers? AFAIK Kindles are running a linux kernel with a lot of busybox, and calculating a running average doesn't appear (to me) to be a particularly difficult calculation. Perhaps it can be argued that this calculation uses battery, but so does sending all of this telemetry to el Amazon. What I'm saying here is that I think that we shouldn't concede privacy in return for convenient little UI widgets, especially when the computing power is available, cheaply, locally.
- freepor 7y agoI think your Kindle use case is single device but mine is across 4 devices so doing anything fully locally doesn’t really work. Unless each device would need to be trained.
- sigwinch28 7y agoI hadn't considered multiple devices, but don't we also have to factor in possible different text sizes on these devices, too? Also, slightly OT: has Amazon ever said whether that reading time is calculated locally or on their servers?
- alpaca128 7y ago> don't we also have to factor in possible different text sizes on these devices, too? The kindle tracks progress via the actual amount of text read instead of pages, so the screen and text size should be irrelevant. It can still be switched to display the page number, but that is also independent of the amount of text on the screen(meaning it doesn't necessarily increase with every swipe to the next "page").
- giosalinas 7y agoThis is very common, everyone is doing it, and it just for measure UX and understand pain points from users, that's all, nobody is fixated with your taps.
- freeone3000 7y agoI really can't wait until "everyone is doing it" ceases to be an excuse.
- frandroid 7y agoWe need a word (like "Godwin's Law" or "whataboutism") to shove in people's faces when they spam the response threads with "everyone is doing it" and "are you surprised?" when a tweet or news item like "BigCo or BigGov is doing Bad Thing X." No we're not surprised but we didn't know, I want them to stop, and fuck you, your comment is not adding to the conversation.
- mlyle 7y agoIt's a valid argument, though. I'll put it in different words to show. "This is useful for legitimate reasons and is an industry standard practice --- even though it has rife potential for abuse, too."
- freeone3000 7y agoIt being a "standard industry practice" doesn't really affect the utility of the trade-off. "Kindle tracks every page turn in order to determine how long you have left in the book" would be a statement of the trade-off, and how much abuse there is and the worthwhileness would be a potential topic of discussion, but "industry standard practice" doesn't really have much bearing. If it's wrong for one person to do it, it's wrong for everyone, even if all people are doing it.
- mlyle 7y ago> It being a "standard industry practice" doesn't really affect the utility of the trade-off. It doesn't affect the utility of the trade-off, but all else being equal we usually accept what exists now. Fighting what already defacto exists is hard-- either as lone consumers, where we're tilting at windmills to little effects... or as regulators, where we risk unintended consequences. > "Kindle tracks every page turn in order to determine how long you have left in the book" would be a statement of the trade-off Nah, Kindle tracks all these actions so that developers can improve ux and understand how the device is being used. Wonder how often people turn pages by mistake? Look for quick pairs of page forward with page backward. Then maybe you can think about touch sensitivity. How much will be people be annoyed if you remove the buttons? See what proportion of users exclusively, mostly, or don't use buttons. > If it's wrong for one person to do it, it's wrong for everyone, even if all people are doing it. It's wrong for anyone to abuse the information. If we have an industry of people using the information ethically, and then one bad actor misuses the information, we need to consider that background. Do we take measures solely against misuse, or do we attempt to stop the collection to have more certainty in stopping the misuse?
- Kuiper 7y agoOne of the selling points for Kindle is that if you switch devices partway through (e.g. switch from reading on your tablet to reading on your phone, or switch from reading the ebook to listening to the audiobook in your car), it remembers what page you're on, so you can resume exactly where you left off. Amazon actively touts this "Whispersync" feature in their marketing. (From the Kindle product page: "With Whispersync, switch from Kindle to the Kindle app without losing your place (requires Wi-Fi).") One would presume that Amazon achieves this by tracking whenever readers tap the screen to advance to the next page. (And having a timestamp for that tap matters for resolving merge conflicts.) Also worth noting that in the case of Kindle Unlimited (Amazon's "Netflix for ebooks" program), authors get paid per page read. (If a person reads the first 5 pages of your book and drops it, the author gets paid less than if they read the whole thing.) One of the things that Amazon has to deal with is fraud prevention, to detect when authors are finding ways to game metrics: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/notorious-kindle-unlimited-abuser-has-been-booted-from-the-bookstore/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/notorious-kindle-unlimited...
- rtkwe 7y agoThere's a less invasive way to do that though by storing the latest location for each device. You don't need to store each and every page turn for the page sync feature.
- jbob2000 7y agoThen the next news article will read "Amazon stores the locations of where you are in your ebooks!". You can't have your cake and eat it too, amazon needs to store something to make this feature work.
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- Karunamon 7y agoIt's the same thing with the locations, since your "page" is entirely dependent on your screen size and font setting. The end of a given page could reference no less than 40 different positions in the book (8 possible font sizes, 5 different screen sizes on all available kindles).
- cryptozeus 7y agoWhy is this a surprise? They do show advertisements so how do you think they gather target data ?
- whateveracct 7y agoI've never met a PM who didn't want this stuff if it was feasible.
- shkkmo 7y agoWhat I'd love is a small, bug free e-reader, ideally waterproof, that I can load my own books onto and doesn't track me. Unfortunately such a product doesn't seem to exist.
- Nition 7y agoA Kindle is one of those (barring the waterproof) if you keep the wifi off and transfer your books via USB to your PC with Calibre.
- shkkmo 7y agoKindles are usually pretty limited in terms on the formats they work with since they really only want you to buy books through their store in their formats.
- zozbot234 7y agoCalibre takes care of that.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y agoExactly. I never connect mine to wifi, leave it on airplane mode, and use Calibre to transfer books.
- truckerbill 7y agoI have a Kobo Forma and it comes quite close to ideal for me at least.
- robin_reala 7y agoKobo Libra H20s aren’t too big (144mm x 159mm), are waterproof, and it’s trivial to sideload epubs.
- mynameisvlad 7y agoI mean, the Kindle is the same in that regard (not too big, waterproof, and easily sideloadable) but I believe Kobo also does tracking. I think you can technically unregister a Kindle and use it only with sideloaded books. I'm not sure, but Onyx (http://onyxboox.com/ http://onyxboox.com/) probably don't track.
- whatitdobooboo 7y agoDoes this really matter? Maybe I'm missing something?
- JohnFen 7y agoIt matters to some people. Or, at least, it matters to me. The less data that is being phoned home, the more comfortable and happier I am.
- eclipxe 7y agoWhy does this matter to you?
- JohnFen 7y agoFor a number of reasons, but the main one is what I said in my comment -- it's important to me to minimize data leakage, even for relatively trivial data. In this age of Big Data, when it's relatively inexpensive to weave together a large number of small data points to come up with an overall profile that is truly invasive, I have to consider every byte that is sent to be a risk, and to be avoided when at all possible.
- eclipxe 7y agoThanks for answering. If you don't mind me asking, why is it important to you to minimize data leakage? (Not trying to say it's wrong, I'd like to understand your POV).
- JohnFen 7y agoI think I answered that in my comment... my biggest concern is that I want as little data about me as possible in databases. There's also the question of autonomy. I actively resent data collection without my informed consent. Companies that do this are, in my opinion, being abusive and infringing on my right to autonomy and, to a degree, to have control over aspects of my existence that matter to me.
- wiredone 7y ago...Just wait until they hear about services like Google Analytics, and MixPanel. Jokes aside, i often find the excitement around "tracking" to be frustrating. Like fears of global conspiracies and mind control, the idea that somewhere a companies engineers are using this data to track your inner most thoughts is crazy in practice. Instead they're using it as a way to diagnose a bug when your ebook crashes or as a way to figure out how to make sure you're not getting stuck in a poorly design UI.
- braythwayt 7y agoIt's not a dichotomy. It can, for example, be that out of 1,000 companies tracking your every click, your every character typed, and your every web site visited, 999 are doing it for better bug tracking or feature development. But the 1,000th company is Facebook. So it feels reasonable for people to ask, "What are you tracking, how is it used, and how can I be confident it won't be abused?"
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- noident 7y ago>What are you tracking, how is it used, and how can I be confident it won't be abused? Because of the nature of computer security, you cannot be certain that any data that you give to a 3rd party will be secure. Once it leaves your machine, it's out of your control, forever. Maybe an initially privacy friendly policy vanishes once the company is bought out, or a data breach occurs and the data is suddenly indefinitely in the public domain. This doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to every single company storing data. The only way to prevent is to have a data retention policy and invest heavily in security, which pretty much nobody does except for the really big players.
- lorec0re 7y agoHey Google haters where are you? time to start complaining about this...
- TheFiend7 7y agoThis isn't necessarily sinister. I know UI/UX designers and a lot of them talk about wanting a heatmap of clicks on a given webpage for experience reasons. They want to know where and what you're clicking and how often so they can optimize processes and flow. It gives insight into how things are used and what's used most often etc. Granted this isn't necessarily directly applicable to this case with the kindle, but similar in concept.
- stefan_ 7y agoFacebook receiving purchase events from Dominos with the toppings you ordered isn't necessarily sinister. They just want to know what you are eating! Users are not your experimental group. This attitude should have died years ago, latest with the GDPR.
- TheFiend7 7y agoVery different concepts actually. One is optimizing/improving experience based on anonymous data, the other is building user profiles for targeted ads. Mapbox is a fantastic example of mass data aggregation of users that has been anonymized. EDIT: Why should we do clinical studies on medicines when that could be invasive to a persons privacy collecting such personal information? Is it necessarily wrong? Tools can be used for good and evil, that's the problem here, not the tool itself.
- pseudalopex 7y agoThe Kindle data is tied to the account. And who says Amazon isn't using it to target ads? Clinical trials require informed consent and institutional review. Regulating software telemetry like other human subject research would make privacy advocates very happy.
- TheFiend7 7y agoWe actually agree with each other so I'm struggling to see what your point is that contradicts mine. I explicitly said what I'm talking about isn't necessarily directly applicable to amazon kindle. I also agreed with you regarding software telemetry being used responsibly and irresponsibly. So I'll repeat I don't see where we disagree.
- nedrocks 7y agoI'm certain this type of data is tracked on most devices. In an optimistic outlook it drives a better customer experience because AMZN can capture trends in data to discover things like "oh people change the page forward too frequently accidentally" and track down root causes. In a pessimistic sense it can help target you based on how long you spend reading specific content and which content you highlight as a reader. Generally every product I am aware of tracks interaction based data such as where someone clicks or taps and what context they are in. Consider things like `utm` parameters which suffix most links people click to determine the context they clicked on something and what they clicked on. I do not see this as sinister. I imagine somewhere in settings one can turn this feature off but I don't know for sure. * Disclaimer: I am currently employed at a subsidiary of Amazon. These views are my own.
- luckylion 7y ago> "oh people change the page forward too frequently accidentally" Would you need to log every page turn with every book and time and date for something like that though? Wouldn't that be a more specific event like "turns page forward, turns page back within x seconds"? This sounds more like "we don't know what we might use this data for, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it ... who knows, maybe we can deduct some profile from knowing how quick the user read through that chapter in that book" than legitimate use cases.
- nedrocks 7y agoThis assumes the client can keep state in a more reasonable way than a server can piece it together. Definitely a stateful event is more powerful but is likely more lossy. From what I've seen tracking simple events and then piecing them together en masse tends to show up significantly more frequently.
- luckylion 7y agoSure, I mean, it's also easier because you don't have to know the questions you might want answered. Given the very private nature of the data ("he read Marx and Mao, and read some sections carefully!"), vacuuming up as much as possible doesn't sound like a good idea. Add to that the almost chronic inability of large corporations to protect data, they really should start treating data collection as a liability rather than an opportunity.
- hef19898 7y agoKind of unrelated, but I did discover some, say, strange behaviur of Alexa ately. See, I don't use Amazon music on my phone but Google Music. My wife and kinds listen to Amazon Music on Alexa. We also have very different music tastes. I was kind of surprised that when my wife asked Alexa to play music she likes Alexa started to play stuff like Five Finger Death Punch. I do have the Alexa app installed on my phone so.
- WalterBright 7y agoWhen I read my Kindle, I turn off the wifi/cell. I only turn that on when I want to look at the Amazon store. I do this mostly to save battery life, but also so it doesn't track (but of course it may save up these logs to transmit when I do turn the wifi/cell back on). The Kindle at least keeps track of my last read position in all my books. Foxit only tracks for the last two pdfs. Ditto for every other reader I've tried. I've had to resort to keeping a separate note of my place in the book.
- delecti 7y ago> I do this mostly to save battery life, but also so it doesn't track (but of course it may save up these logs to transmit when I do turn the wifi/cell back on). It absolutely does save up those logs. I worked on some of the code which saves up the advertisement view metrics. Admittedly that was more than 2 years ago, but knowing the team we handed that off to, I would be astonished if that's changed.
- WalterBright 7y agoThanks for the confirmation.
- asdff 7y agoPretty embarrassing that other readers can't get a bookmark right.
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- scottmcleod 7y agoWhy is this even surprising? What kind of product team doesn't track user behavior for improving the product or supporting other features?
- c0restraint 7y agoWouldn't they need to, in order to provide this functionality? I use several devices to read Kindle books and it synchronizes my state across devices (latest page turned across each device). The info in this screenshot looks to pertain to that.
- luckylion 7y agoGiven that kindle devices have different sizes (and usually different font sizes), can be in portrait and landscape mode etc, is "page" even meaningful for cross-device synchronization? Sounds like syncing the text position would be closer to it, not "has advanced a page (whatever page might be)".
- berdon 7y agoEx-Amazon employee from a while back (to which I only speak on behalf of my own feelings and imply no other intent...). IIRC this was driven from a analytics standpoint, wasn't actually really used outside of bug deep dives, and was horrible to implement. That's not to say it hasn't started to be abused but at the time it was completely from a "customer/UX first" stance.
- blackbrokkoli 7y agoThis is a great example, one could almost say the epitome, of what is wrong with modern product design. Gigawatts of electricity are used to run sophisticated neural nets, advanced data pipelines built to funnel all that data to the mother ship and thousands of dev hours went into this elaborate tracking mechanism. You need that of course, "to improve UX". I do not have a problem with that for such a device, per se. Fair enough, go real overkill on your "user research" then. And yet, so many UX aspect of a Kindle are just plain bad. Problems which have varying degrees of complexity, to be fair. But some of them are so trivial yet impactful that it is hard to imagine they would escape the attention of a single UX engineer worth his salt looking at a Kindle for two days. Some examples: * I have a cheap Kindle, which means the lockscreen shows ads. They are so hilariously anti-personalized I can't even. Like, you have all this Big Data and you think I will ever buy a run-of-the-mill cliche romance? * The recommendation system itself. When you "start out" on your Kindle, your recommendations are literally just every single other book the few authors you read have ever written. * Having airplane mode off seems to drain the battery massively even if I am not connected to WiFi/Bluetooth nor actively attempting to * One can view interesting usage statistics, but only if you declare yourself as your own child and activate a password based content lock * I have to manually flip through sometimes dozens of pages of imprint, one-line-per-page copyright notices and so on until the Kindle realizes I have indeed "read" the book so it stops displaying it at the top at "99% progress" What I want to say: Do all the Edge AI and IOT and Orwellian Surveillance for all I care. But maybe fix the boring old low hanging fruits first?
- noident 7y agoThere should be an open e-ink device and ecosystem. Even if you go through the trouble of flashing your kindle with a custom image, you're still stuck signing into your Amazon account to borrow a book from the library. Librarians will never give out your checkout history to anybody without a national security letter or a warrant. Meanwhile, Amazon is probably passing your reading records around to 50 different analysts and storing them in databases where dozens or hundreds of engineers have access. When I go to amazon.com, I see recommendations for other books similar to those that I've read, including those that I didn't buy through their store.
- xkcd-sucks 7y agoKobo comes close. there are invasive analytics but it's trivial to modify the embedded Linux it runs + hostsfile it etc.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago> Even if you go through the trouble of flashing your kindle with a custom image, you're still stuck signing into your Amazon account to borrow a book from the library. You could always just get all your reading material from Library Genesis instead. I have owned several Kindle models over the years, but I have never had to interact with Amazon. I put the device in airplane mode the moment I took it out of the box and kept it that way, and I have downloaded all my reading material from LibGen (or a publisher who provides DRM-free ebook files) and moved it to the device via USB.
- peripitea 7y agoPutting aside whether this is ok for a second: This should not be a surprise to anyone. Of course they are doing this. I would almost argue that it would be foolish of them not to collect this data. The lifetime expected value of the data is so much higher than the marginal cost of transferring and storing it. I can't think how many times on the product side of services I've run that we've been grateful to have this kind of data. Sometimes it's for obvious reasons that we always knew, but often it's for suddenly crucial reasons that we never could have anticipated when we first started collecting the data. Again, that doesn't mean it's OK and I strongly support GDPR-style data privacy legislation in the US. But in the meantime I guarantee you that just about every service you use is gathering data like this and a whole bunch more.
- dragonsngoblins 7y agoWhat I want is an ereader with symmetrical page turn buttons. I can't be the only person who switches which hand they are holding their book in and doesn't want to have to rotate the book 180 degrees and wait for the page to flip when doing so. Surely changing hands is a common use case I'd not worry about tracking if the experience is good enough. Please someone make sane controls for these devices again
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- tanilama 7y agoIs this surprising? Sounds like a very natural step approach logging.